Jiří Weiss, born in Prague’s German-speaking Jewish community, had twice been forced to flee from his homeland.
The first time was in 1939, when the German army marched into Czechoslovakia. Originally an award-winning documentary filmmaker, Weiss fled to Paris and then on to London. He worked there with the Crown Film Unit and later documented the war years in films such as The Rape Of Czechoslovakia (1940) and Before the Raid (1943), which was about a group of Norwegian fishermen facing the Nazi occupation of their small village.

Weiss returned to Prague after the end of the war. The Wolf Trap (1957) was his first major feature film, won the Critics Prize at the 1957 Venice Film Festival, and established him as a key figure in Czechoslovakia’s burgeoning post-war cinema. Set in the 1920s and against the backdrop of bourgeois respectability, it centres on an orphaned young woman taken in by a small-town mayor and his older wife. A study of frustration and denial, the film is distinguished by Weiss’ distinctive cinematic language.

Romeo, Juliet and Darkness came in 1969 and enhanced his reputation even further, winning the Grand Prix at both the San Sebastian and Taormina Film Festivals that year.